1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to proximity detection and recognition of WLAN and related enabled mobile devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Understanding visitor behavior is critical to the design and optimization of retail and public spaces. Visitor behavior information is valuable to both owner/operator/provider of the space, venue or real estate as well as the merchants that may be operating businesses in space or venue provided by the real estate provider.
Adoption of mobile devices including mobile phones, smart phones, and tablets has enabled new means of allowing consumers to interact with merchants. Consumers can announce their presence as well as their interest in specific offers from the merchants they are visiting or are considering visiting. Merchants can also use mobile devices to better understand customer behavior and better incent customers.
Mobile devices are typically aware of their location thanks to technologies such as the global positioning system (GPS) and can provide this information to both software applications as well as the mobile communication network itself. GPS requires the mobile device to have a clear view of the sky in order to receive positioning information from multiple GPS satellites which are typically deployed above the equator in geosynchronous orbit. Because of this, GPS does not work well indoors or in outdoor locations that have obscured access to the portion of the sky where GPS satellites appear. This includes outdoor locations with tall buildings or other large infrastructure such as bridges (referred to as “urban canyons”) and areas with dense foliage.
Mobile communications networks also have extensive positioning capabilities. Terrestrial based mobile communications network deploy a large number of base stations. The design of mobile communications networks has the mobile device stay in constant association with one or more base stations. As a result, the mobile communications network has information about the macro location of a mobile device. The range of a base station can be several miles in diameter and accurate positioning is made difficult due to signal strength fluctuations and other technical challenges.
Newer systems such as “Assisted GPS” are designed to combine information from GPS and mobile communications networks to improve accuracy. These systems also suffer from accuracy problems when GPS coverage is lost for extended periods of time.
Alternatives to satellite based location systems are emerging. One such example involves frequently sensing and recording the identification (typically by MAC address) and the signal strength of all the 802.11 based WiFi access points at a specific location. This recording is typically performed with a specially designed vehicle. When a mobile device needs to know its position, the mobile device itself can sense all the 802.11 access points in its vicinity and compare this with the previously recorded information to determine its location. This approach is effective in urban locations where GPS does not perform well. Increased AP density and frequent recording increase the accuracy of this type of system. These kinds of systems also operate independently of the mobile communications network. Once location is determined at the mobile device, it can be used by software applications on the mobile device to, for example, display location on a map background or it can be reported to a central server via the Internet.
A key consideration for merchants is the enablement and measurement of loyalty. Various techniques and technologies exist to perform this function. In order to attract customers and transaction traffic, merchants offer various transaction based incentive programs either developed internally or offered by a related third party provider. These incentive programs typically provide some credits or points which are provided proportionally to the size of the transaction. Some incentive programs may provide time limited programs where more points are assigned for purchasing a certain kind of good or service or purchasing at a certain class of merchant. Wide varieties of other incentive schemes exist or are possible.
Various systems exist to furnish information to merchants related to visitor behavior in retail and public spaces. These include thermal cameras, stereoscopic video cameras, and infrared light beams as well as other more application specific technologies such as road induction loops.
Such systems lack the ability to accurately detect and report on behavior of visitors between visits to a venue. This is an active area of innovation. Innovations in camera technology including facial recognition are being actively pursued by several parties.
To improve real estate provider and merchant understanding of the visitors to their premises, an improved system would be useful for enabling better understanding of the behavior of customers including visit frequency and visit duration with mobile devices.
One solution is to provide a system for receiving information transmitted by mobile devices in unlicensed spectrum and inferring behavior from this information including overall arrival rate, average length of visit, average frequency of visit, and, where possible, cross reference with loyalty related information.